Al Haymon and Vince McMahon-History shows a similar path

I was struggling with a topic for tonight with being called into the road office and missing the Devils and Cavaliers wins.
I could have watched the Cavaliers on line,but I did have some work to do on this night,so I passed.

However,I was watching something unrelated to sports and suddenly had my column.
Al Haymon is slowly trying to take over the world of boxing and with his recent deals with NBC and Spike along with rumored deals upcoming with CBS,may be in a position to be what he envisions as the boxing answer to the Dana White owned UFC.

That might be the comparison that Al Haymon sees,but I see another one and a chance to see how either history could repeat itself or show how things could have went differently for another sport related business.
Yes,the comparison I'm making for Al Haymon is one Vincent Kennedy McMahon and his World Wrestling "Entertainment" formerly Federation.
A little over thirty years ago,pro wrestling was a business divided among several promoters in different area around the country with each having a little fiefdom cut out for their own doing.
There is a small difference as wrestling was divided by geography,while boxing's promoters are not,but the rest is the same story-a sport ran by multiple promoters with some of them doing better than others,but all operating loosely together.

Where McMahon's vision was to become one wrestling "league" and putting the rest out of business essentially came true by signing their top stars and making his company the only place to see the "best" is basically what Haymon is trying to do,there are even more similarities.
In the 70's and 80's pro wrestling drew such strong local ratings in most areas,the TV stations would pay the promotion to air their shows.
Think of networks paying rights fees for boxing for the correlation,but suddenly Vince McMahon showed up and bought the time slots,shoving the local promotions off the airwaves.
Al Haymon is buying time on the NBC family of networks,Spike TV and rumored to be soon CBS,which leads to ESPN (among others) to question why they are still paying for fights when they could GET paid.
See the similar issues?

What killed those regional promoters was the lack of vision and finances,depending on the case.
They attempted an All-Star group of their own that failed (Pro Wrestling USA) due to few of the promotion being able to work together and as a result saw each of them fall to McMahon one by one.
Boxing might have an advantage here,if Top Rank and Golden Boy can continue to work together among the smaller promoters to provide a quality alternative to Haymon being the only place in town.
I'm not against any one promoter,I just want to see the best fight the best and so often we don't get that.

Vince McMahon is now the only pro wrestling game in town and the result has been stagnation.
Competition brings creativity and I hope Al Haymon has some success,that is good for the boxing business.
However,I don't want to see him become the only place to watch quality fisticuffs and take boxing down the road of wrestling with a stale product that that becomes even more of a niche' product.
Another McMahon comparison-wrestling got so hot for a while that it was on network TV after being off mainstream television for 25+ years.
Boxing has rarely been on network TV for the last 25 years and could get the sport really hot again.
However,the star faded for McMahon and the same could happen for Haymon's group if he is not careful.

Want more parallels? Vince McMahon had one star above all the rest-Hulk Hogan,who wrestled the same lousy match again and again,no matter his opposition.
Al Haymon has one star above all the rest-Floyd Mayweather,who fights the same lousy fight again and again,no matter his competition.
McMahon had one match that the world wanted to see- Hulk Hogan vs Andre the Giant.
Haymon has one match (although he'll have to co-promote it) that the world wants to see-Floyd Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao.
Hogan vs Andre was the biggest pay per view of its time and a Mayweather-Pacquiao bout would certainly be the largest of its period.

Al Haymon has a great idea and he could make lots of money doing it,however my question is this- is it the healthiest manner to grow the sport over the long term?
Will the Top Rank-Golden Boy alliance allow them to be the alternative like WCW was for a while to McMahon's WWF?
Or will they be like WCW in the end- a strong opposition that ended as they simply couldn't create the needed stars to continue generating big business and go out of business?

Al Haymon and Vince McMahon-history may not repeat itself (although it could),but there sure is a similar business plan in order.
It'll be interesting to look back on this in a few years and check out where boxing stands at that time...